Google Blockly - a visual programming language - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/google-blockly/ <comment><USER2> I made a prime sieve: <http://i.imgur.com/Elk5A.png>

It was pretty fun.

JS generated isn't so bad..

      var n;
      var A;
      var i;
      var x;
      var j;

      n = 100;
      A = [];
      for (i = 0; i <= n; i++) {
        A[i - 1] = true;
      }
      var i_end = Math.sqrt(n);
      for (i = 2; i <= i_end; i++) {
        if (A[i - 1] == true) {
          j = Math.pow(i, 2);
          while (j <= n) {
            A[j - 1] = false;
            j = (j || 0) + i;
          }
        }
      }
      for (x = 2; x <= n; x++) {
        window.alert([x,': ',A[x - 1]].join(''));
      }

<comment><USER3> You win the prize for most impressive Blockly program yet. Looking forward to what you will write once we get procedures landed. \-- The Blockly Team.

<comment> a-priori So that explains why I couldn't figure out how to call a procedure...

<comment><USER4> Same here, I was already going crazy hehe

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The name of this language immediately made me think of the blocky.io (<http://blocky.io/>) visual programming language, which was written in Common Lisp by David O'Toole before this language was developed. Blocky.io is _very_ similar to this language, in more then just name, it even has its own MIT scratch like interface: [http://blocky.io/blog/wp- content/uploads/2012/03/Screenshot-...](http://blocky.io/blog/wp- content/uploads/2012/03/Screenshot-1-300x217.png).

</comment><comment><USER6> i solved a problem featured on the yc company interviewstreet.com codesprint.

the problem: Count the number of one-bits from 0 to 2^n - 1, for n from 1 to 20.

my solution: <http://i.imgur.com/hUxt0.png>

when you run the solution:

         Number of one-bits in 1 bit numbers from 0 to 1 = 1
         Number of one-bits in 2 bit numbers from 0 to 3 = 4
         Number of one-bits in 3 bit numbers from 0 to 7 = 12
         Number of one-bits in 4 bit numbers from 0 to 15 = 32
         Number of one-bits in 5 bit numbers from 0 to 31 = 80
         Number of one-bits in 6 bit numbers from 0 to 63 = 192
         Number of one-bits in 7 bit numbers from 0 to 127 = 448
         ....

JS:

        var list;
        var x;
        var prev;
        var onebits;
        var doubleatprev;

        list = [];
        list[0] = 1;
        list[1] = 4;
        for (x = 2; x <= 20; x++) {
        prev = x;
        onebits = Math.pow(2, prev);
        doubleatprev = list[x - 1] * 2;
        list[1 + x - 1] = onebits + doubleatprev;
        }
        for (x = 1; x <= 20; x++) {
          window.alert(['Number of one-bits in ',x,' bit numbers    from 0 to ',Math.pow(2, x) - 1,' = ',list[x - 1]].join(''));
        }

Took 15 minutes to code up and 45 minutes to debug the array indexing :) One of these days I'll be able to write the JS and get the Blockly instead of the other way around - that'd be super awesome!

<comment><USER7> Take some of that time to figure out the math and the code becomes trivial:

      for (n = 1; n <= 20; n++) {
        window.alert(n << (n-1))
      }

A short explanation: <http://mathbin.net/98435>

<comment><USER8> A shorter explanation with no binomial coefficients in it: Write down those 2^n numbers once in order, and once in reverse order, and pair them off. Note that each x gets paired with 2^(n-1) XOR x. So each number and its partner have exactly n 1-bits between them. In other words, twice the number we're looking for is 2^n.n; so the number we're looking for is 2^(n-1).n.

(More informally: Each bit is 0 half the time and 1 half the time, because you can pair off x and 2^(n-1) XOR x. Therefore the total number of 1-bits is half the total number of bits, QED.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey, you can create new maze puzzles for your fun from the JavaScript console (WebKit Inspector, Firebug,...)! First create a new function to paint the custom map by pasting this code into the console: <https://gist.github.com/2848451>

Next setup Maze.MAP matrix with value 1 for empty cell, 0 for path and 2/3 for start/finish positions.

Now run loadMazeMap() to load your new challenge ;)

Example: <http://www.dodaj.rs/f/f/nM/4w3wop7u/custommaze.png>

</comment><comment><USER10> The UI for this reminds me a lot of Scratch from MIT.

<comment><USER11> Ah scratch. Some years ago I wanted to show what cool stuff you can do with computers to a 10y old boy. Found scratch and actually got hooked myself for a bit ^^. Ended up with this (slightly embarassing thing): <http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/DeepDuh/941811>. After programming a bit, the limitations become apparent big time. Google's idea to implement this as a Javascript parser is probably a good idea, this way some kids may make the bridge to the actual program. Also, it's probably way way better performing. If you like visual programming, have a look at subtext. IMO this is the best idea for a visual programmig style, I hope it gets traction <http://www.subtextual.org/>.

<comment><USER12> My niece was telling me about Scratch and how she knew what was wrong with other people's code and how she'd fix it.

I am so freaking proud.

<comment><USER11> You should be. I hope we will have some kids to show things like this some day ;).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This seems to be done by an extraordinarily smart guy - Neil Fraser. He's behind "google-diff-match-patch" [1] project, which is AFAIK the machinery behind realtime collaboration on google docs.

Definitely worth watching.

[1] <http://code.google.com/p/google-diff-match-patch/>

<comment><USER14> I've worked with Neil, and he is indeed extraordinary. I'd say he's who I want to be when I grow up except it's not clear he's grown up. See, for example, the centrifuge in his living room (<http://neil.fraser.name/hardware/centrifuge/>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand. 1st it was part of AppInventor lab experiment. Google closed it in December and MIT took it over. Now it's back? Why?

<comment><USER16> Not enough Google brand ratio in it, I guess.

"Google blocky" > 50% brand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I should note that the appearance of Blockly is very similar to App Inventor[1]. It seems that visual programming languages with imperative and sequential semantics converge to one direction: "blocky" combining core primitives and custom primitives. In this sense I think it's THE future of domain-specific languages.

[1] <http://www.appinventor.org/>

<comment><USER18> Came here to say this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I noticed something interesting and disturbing after reading some of the answers: people are more concerned with the length of the code rather than the optimal solution (no extra turns / backtracking). This reminds me of interviewing at MS about 12 years ago and all they cared about was the ability to write recursive code.

IMO, yes, elegant code is fantastic, but don't lose track of why we write code in the first place.

Edit: consolidating from post below.

<http://imgur.com/Nvy8u>

Here's a minimal solution with optimal logic (for this map) without hard coding. It also ensures that there is a forward step in every iteration of the while loop.

Basically it's just an order of precedence:

Turn right > turn left > go straight

<comment><USER20> So, I'm more disturbed that most of the answers people are posting aren't general solutions: they happen to solve this maze, but don't handle corner- cases (hah! I guess that's a pun ;P) of other mazes. You may as well just hardcode the answer to this one.

I actually found a similar bug in yours: you will get trapped in a square and be unable to exit, as you will constantly keep hugging the column along the left, without ever deciding to finally exit off to the right. S=Start, G=Goal, O=Empty

        S-O-O
          | |
          O-O-G

<comment><USER19> Keep in mind that I specified that this is an optimal solution for this particular map. General solutions are great, but if you have additional information for leverage, you use it. In fact, as stated in explanation of the solution, the solution solves maps which the following precedence preference: Right > Left > Straight. Just FYI, it's not a bug if you understand the limitations of a solution.

General solutions for mazes (graphs really) generally follow a depth, breadth or hybrid approach. I'm actually surprised that all of the general solutions have been depth and none breadth. It's a bit more convoluted in this case as you'd have to traverse backwards, but conceptually, it's no more different than using a FIFO or LIFO.

In any case, with the tools given for this particular "challenge," a general graph search is impossible as you can't record previous states. It's simple to construct a map which causes an infinite loop.

A good analogy of my approach would be using a knowledge based finite state machine over a genetic algorithm or neural net. Is it less elegant? Sure is. However, it's also clearly defining a particular problem / solution pair with certain limitations and expectations.

<comment><USER20> Then, as I said, "you may as well just hardcode the answer to this one". It takes 15 blocks to hardcode an answer with the optimal solution and almost no time thinking. This solution not only takes 15 blocks to build but executes in exactly that much time.

Alternatively, you can spend a bunch of time proving to yourself that you have a solution that takes advantage of properties of this specific maze that gets you down to 10 blocks. However, as the result now has multiple levels of nesting and is littered with comparisons and jumps, it is going to take more time to execute and get to the end of the maze. I'd even go so far as to claim it is no longer an "optimal solution".

As you said yourself: "yes, elegant code is fantastic, but don't lose track of why we write code in the first place". I can understand spending the time to build something complex if you at least solve the general problem, but to spend more time in development to end up with a slower-to-execute answer that looks like a general solution but isn't seems to fall into your own trap ;P.

<comment><USER19> You're assuming the fallacy that it takes less time for an explicit solution. The solution took less than 2 minutes and most of that time was spent trying to figure out how to manipulate the puzzle pieces. Now if you're talking execution time, yes conditionals and loops add to the complexity of the execution, but for any non-trivial graph, the implementation time of a non- pattern recognizing solution would be much greater.

In any case, the points I'm trying to make are simple:

1) Solid program execution is much more important than line reduction.

2) Defining a problem space / limitations allows for better code / reuse.

3) When the implementation trade off is sufficiently small, it's better to increase the scope of the solution for possible reuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Quick feedback: Would be great if the front page included some demos already built so we could have a better idea of what the final code looks like.

<comment><USER3> Done. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The puzzle-piece representation of structure is neat, but at a 2-minute glance it seems not to scale to real complexity.

One of the big ideas in programming is abstraction/modularity/reuse, and I don't see how that fits in here.

(I found the "procedure" block, but I don't see anything that fits inside it other than "break out of loop", which doesn't make any sense. And I don't see how to call the procedure.)

So I find myself looking at the samples everyone's demonstrating here and finding they're harder to read than real well-organized code.

</comment><comment><USER23> I like the comment in the Maze demo's javascript:

        /**
         * Execute the user's code.  Heaven help us...
         */

</comment><comment><USER24> <https://imgur.com/VBsht>

      while (true) do
        if not (wall to the left) then
          (turn left)
        while (wall ahead) do
          (turn right)
        (move forward)

This uses the general maze-solving logic of following the outer wall in one direction until you find the exit. It never turns then turns back or runs into a wall.

<comment><USER20> This will not solve general mazes. S=Start, G=Goal, O=Empty

        O-O-O
        |   |
        O S-O-G
        |   |
        O-O-O

<comment><USER24> I should have been more clear. That's the general logic for mazes where both the entrance and exit are on the outer edge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Notice how statement blocks are different shape than expression blocks. That's my favorite feature of this language.

</comment><comment><USER26> After I placed _turn left_ after _move forward_ , what was my first instinct? Same as yours, I wanted to right-click _move forward_ and place the copy after _turn left_.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can this program be made any shorter? <http://www.dodaj.rs/f/1K/vW/2gLz63rl/blockly.png>

<comment><USER27> An "else" would help; you can add one by hitting the + symbol on the if. With the else, you can get the shortest program that'll solve the maze (transcribing using approximate notation in lieu of a screenshot):

        while True:
            if wall(AHEAD):
                turn(LEFT)
            else:
                move(FORWARD)
                turn(RIGHT)

However, the addition of one more if makes the solution much faster and look more sensible, by not turning to the right and immediately back to the left:

        while True:
            if wall(AHEAD):
                turn(LEFT)
            else:
                move(FORWARD)
                if not wall(RIGHT):
                    turn(RIGHT)

<comment><USER28> You can add an 'else' clause to the 'if' block by clicking the '+' which launches a sub-editor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reminds me of Sprog - <http://sprog.sourceforge.net/>

Back in the day I was looking at Sprog for some client-facing project so probably worth looking back at it again. Here's a nice example of _Data Munging with Sprog_ \- <http://www.perl.com/pub/2005/06/23/sprog.html>

<comment><USER30> Big thumbs up for Sprog. Also, MIT Scratch, and Yahoo! Pipes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Two feature requests:

As evidenced by this thread a 'Share' button would be great.

I'd love to be able to duplicate blocks by shift-click-n-drag.

</comment><comment><USER32> Definitely needs an easy way to share programs. Taking screenshot and hosting it is not elegant at all!

</comment><comment><USER33> This past weekend at the Vancouver Polyglot Conference there was a session with the author of Waterbear (<http://waterbearlang.com/>) that got a fairly good turnout. It looks remarkably similar.

</comment><comment><USER34> I can't seem to find the end condition for the Maze demo. There is no 'goal_reached?'

<comment><USER35> When I solved it, the program just stopped running.

<comment><USER34> My browser crashes presumably because I use 'while true'. Chrome Version 19.0.1084.52

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Looks like s-expressions to me.

<comment><USER37> Blockly was influenced by App Inventor, which has Scheme inside:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Inventor_for_Android#Histor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Inventor_for_Android#History)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Waterbear still has my vote for generating Javascript with the block based coding metaphore

<http://waterbearlang.com>

</comment><comment><USER39> This could become pretty interesting, especially if there is a platform aspect. Meaning I could easily extend this with my own elements and commands.

I can see some use for example in one application where we are importing data from other systems. Something like this could be used to create a quite nice user interface for creating simple programs that would manipulate and filter the incoming data.

</comment><comment><USER40> I like it a lot, and look forward to trying it out on my girlfriend to see how a non-coder responds to it.

Whilst working out the while loop however, I put the code to loop outside the block instead of inside, thereby making an infinite loop. Now the Chrome browser window is completely unresponsive, and won't even close, so it seems I have to kill chrome to get rid of it.

Other than that, cool!

</comment><comment><USER41> I've always thought it would be cool to have a backend environment similar to labVIEW (but faster!). I use labview in my research and it is the best solution I've found for encouraging / allowing for code re-use. This Google Blockly, to some extent, seems to be heading that way - I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm surprised about the negative criticism. Looks like it would be a great teaching tool for non-computer programmers.

<comment><USER43> Possibly, but as far as I can see, all it adds to the mix (that textual teaching languages, e.g. LOGO, don't have) is the certain impossibility of certain syntax errors by only allowing certain parts to click together[1]. The semantic model behind the system is otherwise identical to BASIC or some other ALGOL-ish programming language, with loops and subroutines and mutable variables and so forth. It is quite probable that this might make some tasks easier, especially to a wholly inexperienced programmer, but what I assert are the real challenges of learning to program—algorithmic thinking, code organization, reasoning about program state, &c—remain just as difficult.

[1]: It also only allows variables to be specified from an extendable set, preventing certain problems with unbound or misspelled variables. I can see the possibility of also preventing type errors by constraining shapes further, e.g. all integers could be circular while booleans are hexagonal, so _and_ would have two hexagonal spaces while _+_ would have two circles. If I'm not mistaken, Scratch does something like this, although I do not know how far it is taken there. It would be interesting to see how far this can be developed to constrain the space of possible incorrect programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> fizzbuzz: <http://i.imgur.com/QkLdz.png>

<comment><USER44> I did a fizzbuzz of my own last night [http://neilkod.posterous.com/just-had- to-give-googles-blockl...](http://neilkod.posterous.com/just-had-to-give- googles-blockly-a-try-pretty)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Cool beans.

My suggestion based on no evidence what-so-ever is that I'd like to see something like this in a richer environment.

To give a bad example, VB. The original VB had forms (maybe it still does). You'd make a form. Double click the button and add code for "onclick" basically. I guess maybe that was inspired by Hypercard.

In any case it was really easy to see how to make a useful program because of the structure a form plus code snippets gave. If those code snippets were Blockly that might be better for learning.

A maybe better example is Unity3D. You add a 3d object, attach a Script and start editing code to move that object by supplying an Update() function or something along those lines. Maybe a Step() where you can define state change code snippets?

All I'm saying is a language like Blockly that removes the syntax errors, attached to a larger framework (games, graphics, or webapps), seems like it would make it far more approachable. You could actually make something useful or fun in a less steps.

<comment><USER46> Unity3D has a few 3rd party visual programming languages already, but they're flow-based unlike blocky.

[http://u3d.as/content/neo-pax/antares-universe-vizio- free/29...](http://u3d.as/content/neo-pax/antares-universe-vizio-free/29D)

<http://www.detoxstudios.com/products/uscript/>

<http://www.hutonggames.com/index.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Looks good, but I just crashed my chrome after putting a "repeat while>and" block in between one of the move functions. Might want to watch out for new users accidentally crashing their browsers while trying to do something innocent.

</comment><comment><USER48> I remembered a trick about mazes: if you keep your hand on the right wall, you'll eventually reach the end of the maze (assuming that the beginning and end share a contiguous wall)

<http://imgur.com/i2uOj>

Fun puzzle!

<comment><USER49> The same is true for the left side:

<http://imgur.com/fwOMy>

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Love this idea for teaching kids. Reminds me of the visual programming in Click N Create / Multimedia Fusion / Games factory which was/is very advanced and powerful.

Given sufficient resource and polish something like this could be awesome.

<comment><USER51> interesting attempt; things on my mind; what if I colorize my python code based on block depth or what if we do a 3D version of this; and what if we do a game of "angry blocks" to program.

<comment><USER38> <http://scriptastic.greenbush.us> uses the Waterbear framework fo let kids create scripts for the 3D objects they create using Opensim -> <http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page> .. tons of fun when combines with Scratch

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Weird, I'm getting redirected here (even in incognito mode): <https://www.google.com/accounts/CookieMismatch>

</comment><comment><USER53> Wall follower for the maze: <http://imgur.com/w8xoQ>

I'd love to do Trémaux's algorithm if they'd add the full list of block types to the maze.

</comment><comment><USER54> I want something to code on my smartphone, without having to type more than is necessary. I expected this kind of thing to arrive. I hope they become more than a little toy.

<comment><USER55> Microsoft's TouchDevelop is pretty good for that. There's a surprising amount of cool things being made with it. WP7 exclusive at this point, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Would have been cool of them to make it touch event friendly .. Seems like it would be a good fit for touchscreen logic noodling

<comment><USER57> The Future page on the wiki mentions tablet support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> 7 blocks has to be the shortest solution, right? <http://imgur.com/r50yY>

<comment><USER59> Even if it's "bigger" than just placing the [turn right] it's faster if you do a:

if not wall right then turn right

instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Did solving the maze remind anyone of Karel from Stanford's CS106A? :D Ah the memories.

</comment><comment><USER61> No way to save programs! Need either a text-to-Blockly importer, or use Google Drive.

</comment><comment><USER62> Very cool, it has already been helpful it teaching me.

</comment><comment><USER63> Noooooo they finished it before I did =(

</comment><comment><USER64> google blockly isn't new. it was obviously inspired by www.waterbearlang.org

</comment><comment><USER65> I need "comment" block.

<comment><USER3> Right-click any block, add comment.

<comment><USER30> Interestingly, that causes an "Aw, snap!" in Chrome (beta channel) for me. (Fresh load of the maze demo; right-click on the only block on the screen, click "add comment".)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I ♥ it.

</comment><comment><USER67> Another language that creates javascript?

<comment><USER68> It should really render to CoffeeScript first.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has the virus changed your scepticism towards Starlink? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Why would a virus effect my opinion of starlink?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because companies were forced to reduce quality of service in order to not break the current internet infrastructure; also because now people _need_ to use high quality internet in sub-urban locations.</comment></comment>


Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/creative-tim <comment><USER2> I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating.

Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make _far_ less per month from their products.

How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

<comment><USER3> If you can make more than $17k/month from straight consulting, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter please.

<comment><USER4> At a modest $200/hr, that's 85 hours. It definitely can be hard to line up that much work month after month, but I've had a few months in a row where I achieved that level of consulting revenue.

The key is to keep raising your rates.

<comment><USER5> I'm a new grad, but since when do consultants get to charge > ~double the hourly rate of what wages would be?

Did I miss the memo?

<comment><USER6> Happens all the time. As a consultant you're responsible for self employment tax (7.5%), benefits, vacation, sick leave, etc. You also have no job security, so you need to make enough that you can cover gaps in between gigs that ended. You price it into your hourly rate accordingly.

So yes, your hourly rate is significantly higher than a comparable salaried employee. No, you're not actually ending up with double the money at the end of the day.

<comment><USER5> How do I establish a background to be a profitable consultant?

\- Work at X company for Y years?

\- GitHub?

\- Networking?

<comment><USER7> The only thing you need to get paid (picking a number) $40,000 for solving a business problem is to be able to sell a client you have identified on the desirability of paying you $40,000 to solve a business problem. This is the hardest thing for engineers to stomach about business. Being good at what you do is table stakes for consulting; a major determinant of one's success is one's ability to get good at selling.

There are ways to use OSS contributions or networking to assist in developing that client and making that sale, but they are not required. "I worked 5 years at Google" does not entitle one to a consulting gig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I devour indiehacker's interviews and I love the transparency - thanks to both sides of the table.

According to the numbers here, 42% of the 17,000 monthly revenues are spent on 6 people. That's $1190 per person per month if everyone is paid equally.

Is everyone in Romania, and is that a living wage there? If not, how are your employees making ends meet?

Edit: that last sentence sounds accusatory - I don't mean it to. I just mean: do you have a strategy of part-timers who have other income streams, do you take side contracts, etc.

<comment><USER9> >Is everyone in Romania, and is that a living wage there?

It's a very good living wage for Romania but low for what other IT people are earning, ~$2k monthly.

<comment><USER10> Why don't Romanians just get remote jobs?

<comment><USER11> Do you believe it to be that easy to get a remote job, such that all Romanians can simply just "get" one?

<comment><USER12> It's not _easy_ , but you can do it. Source: I'm Romanian and I work remotely. I found the job here in the monthly Who's Hiring thread.

<comment><USER11> My point was not "Romanians can't get remote jobs," but rather "It's not so easy to get remote jobs that all Romanians can simply get a remote job."

<comment><USER12> It's as easy or as difficult as getting any other programming job. The more you know your stuff and good English, the better the job you'll find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi everybody, here is Alex, the co-founder of Creative Tim. Hope the information from this interview will help you achieve more with your current business or give you the courage to start your own business.

If you have any suggestions or feedback I would be glad to talk with you.

Best, Alex

<comment><USER14> Hey Alex! Thanks for sharing about creative-tim!

You have an excellent business on your hands.

<comment><USER13> Thank you! Glad that you like it :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 17k a month is only 204k a year which is awesome don't get me wrong but I'm not sure that supports 6 employees.

<comment><USER16> Average gross salary in Romania is $740/month, so $17k/month should be able to pay 6 salaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> With all these "success" stories flying about I'd absolutely love to know how many losers there are for each "Creative Tim". 10x, 100x, 1000x ?

</comment><comment><USER18> They make great templates. We have used their chart templates in our BI tool - [https://drilldb.com](https://drilldb.com)

Their pricing is also very affordable compared to many alternatives. You don't have to think twice before making a purchase.

</comment><comment><USER19> I read some of the comments, many saying that $17,000/mo. isn't a lot of money, but don't forget that Creative Tim is based in Romania.

Salaries in Romania aren't as good as in the States.

I'm currently based in Italy and a programmer can make as little as 1,200/mo. (salaries in Italy are much higher than in Romania, possibly 100-200% more). I make more than that freelancing, but I don't think 17,000/mo. is bad, both in general and for a company based in Romania.

</comment><comment><USER20> This worked very well on me, as I just bought one of their developer licenses for a pro package... Beautiful stuff.

</comment><comment><USER14> here's a link to the other HN thread with no comments or anything:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272696)

<comment><USER17> The indiehacker guy is known for aggressively beating his own drum and posting and reposting his blog links.

Appears effective.

<comment><USER21> Speaking from personal experience - nothing magically happens even if you create something valuable and put your heart and soul into it. You have to beat that drum, even if you hate every note that comes out of it. Which is why there are roles called Sales and Marketing. Being a salesman is an under- appreciated, arduous but honorable job. They create mutually beneficial relationships between parties that might otherwise never find each other.

<comment><USER17> Oh yes I know this. Sadly great products don't sell themselves, but proper sales people can make shit sell like gold.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacker News for iPhone ($3) app is insanely great - <AUTHOR> http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/?=awesome

<comment><USER2> With the risk of sounding like a sour guy, I'm just going to say it: why do people pay money for apps that are essentially web browsers in a shiny package?

I am not against people making money by providing better access to content that is available for free (who hasn't paid for the odd Twitter app), but just take a look at the list of features on the app's promotion page:

      * View top submitted stories, optimized for iPhone
      * Explore comments and threads
      * Browse web links without quitting using the in-app browser

All of these things are true for browsing Hacker News in mobile Safari as well. That's hardly enough to earn the predicate "insanely great" or the $3 price tag in my world.

Admittedly, using Hacker News on an iPhone is not the best mobile browser experience (it could certainly use some css @media queries and perhaps a meta viewport tag, essentially few minutes of work would do the trick), but that hardly warrants a native app, especially if it's not free.

<comment><USER3> "Admittedly, using Hacker News on an iPhone is not the best mobile browser experience"

That's precisely why people are willing to buy an app like this: to improve the experience. Yes, "fixing" HN is easy, if you're pg. If you're just a reader, something like this offers a fix today, for three dollars.

(I agree with you, by the way: I won't pay money for a glorified web browsing app. Just pointing out that I think there's a place for apps like these, if only as a means of pointing out to site owners what they could improve.)

<comment><USER2> I agree, although I meant my comment to be taken in general (there are so many of these apps, for so many different websites).

In the case of HN there actually has been another reader that fixed the mobile experience for free (as mentioned in trimski's comment): <http://toadjaw.com/hn>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well and why should I get this app?

HN is a really lightweight webpage, which looks good even on mobile browsers. The app navigation is similiar to the browser nav and even commenting is similiar as within browser. so why spend $3 to have a bookmark of HN?

<comment><USER5> HN _looks_ decent on mobile browsers, but doesn't handle all that well on them.

On iPhone: font sizes are really too small, voting arrows are practically not hittable without zooming in and trying to zoom in on the articles list confuses Safari (probably because of all the nested tables)

<comment><USER4> On my Iphone browsing HN in landscape just needs one time zooming to become readable. I now switched to palm pre and there it is even much better in landscape, i dont need to zoom.

yes, its a personal feling. but i think one time zooming is ok and not worth buying an app.

<comment><USER5> You're right, but I find that there are so many tap targets because of the table rows and cells that one double-tap zoom ('auto-zoom') is a hit-or-miss affair in mobile Safari . Even on the iPad, where the default font size is less of a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised at the complaining about the $3 price. If something saves me 2 minutes of time, or makes my life the least bit more enjoyable, I'm more than happy to pay $3 for it. That's less than adding bacon and cheese to 2 hamburgers, a coffee out, or a 6 pack of coke.

It's a truly trivial amount of money, and if you'd otherwise like the application, not buying it because it's "too expensive" astounds me.

(I have no connection to this app, its author, or any iPhone authors for that matter)

<comment><USER4> Well it is not the amount of money the complaints are about. It is the fact that it is sold. The complaints are about the fact, that the app offers service which you can get for free by just using your browser, with just one (max. two) taps less than it. So it is just a HN related mini browser. And imho this not really a justification for an app.

Even the argument "it saves me minutes of time" isnt an argument in my eyes as these are truly trivial 2 minutes which you should be glad to spend on something you like as the moment just before HN appears is the moment where you can mentally prepare and calm yourself to enjoy the time you read HN. See it as anticipation and spend the $3 on a coffee which you enjoy while reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Insanely great? These Jobsian adjectives have suffered an inflation of Zimbabwean proportions.

<comment><USER8> I thought insanely great was more of a Douglas Adams thing? Well, he really liked Macs too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One suggestion: make Readability the default option for the articles, with a link to the original article.

<comment><USER10> Or even better, run it through Google's mobile formatter and add a stylesheet, so you download the article quicker.

[http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator....](http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I spent like 3 minutes waiting for the video demo person to type some long comment, so I could see the rest of the app.

<comment><USER12> Hah same here. He should have just stopped typing after "Wow."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Actually, I've been a bit disappointed with it. I miss being able to send a page to Instapaper, which is something that become standard in other apps (like RSS readers).

</comment><comment><USER14> I won't buy an iPhone app that's using Flash inside the phone screen to demo the app. Use of Flash suggests the author doesn't know how to do rich interfaces without Flash, so the app itself can't be that good.

Granted, if I could see the demo, I might discover I was mistaken.

<http://imgur.com/VdUK2.png>

<comment><USER15> No, using Flash means the author might not know how to do rich interfaces with Javascript/CSS/HTML or that he prefers to do rich interfaces for the web in Flash. Or it could mean something else.

Since the iPhone app is written in Objective C, which isn't an option on the web, his choice of Flash for the demo really doesn't tell us anything about how good the app might be, does it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Suggestion: make the video on the website usable on the device the software is meant for, or just put up a bunch of screenshots.

</comment><comment><USER17> Feedback to the owner: The screenshots are displayed behind the flash movie. As this is a jquery fancybox I would propose you just visibility:hidden the flash movie when someone clicks a screenshot (there are hooks in fancybox to use) and make it visible again on close of the fancybox (also a hook for this).

</comment><comment><USER18> Insanely great if you ignore logging in with OpenID. Apparently I was the first person to ask for this, so chances of an implementation were low. Shame.

And yes, really HN just needs a mobile stylesheet. If I had time I'd make one, but at the moment I don't :/

</comment><comment><USER19> There's also <http://www.icombinator.net> which is formatted to the iPhone. I read Hacker News via RSS, so I'm not sure how the full experience is through that site or compares with ToadJaw mentioned earlier.

</comment><comment><USER20> I kinda like the app, but the comments get very laggy on older devices if there are a few of them (like 100+).

</comment><comment><USER21> free on android! (had to say it)

</comment><comment><USER22> I've been waiting the iPad-compatible release since April...</comment>


Ask HN: Set up own eCommerce Site vs Hosted one - <AUTHOR>

I'm more of an infrastructure kind of guy that dabbles in websites, some basic programming and such for learning and (fun). I was asked this question by someone looking to set up a small Internet store (eCommerce) selling some things for decorating the house.
Now, there are plenty of choices, Magento being the most known to me, but the question is first:
- Do I choose to set up a server and install everything or do I choose to go the hosted (pre-installed/configured route) benefits etc??
Second:
- There is Magento, but what would be a better solution if any?
Thanks for any helpful answers/remarks!! <comment><USER2> My 2 cents, start hosted and get sales moving and work within the confines of a hosted solution. If/when sales are moving at a good clip and they can justify the expense then you can talk about using either a e-commerce framework or a custom solution.

As for frameworks/systems: there are lots of options other than Magento, it depends on the stack you want to sit on and they all have pros/cons.

I almost always recommend small clients (or new ecomm shops) start off with a hosted solution, then graduate to a framework solution and only when all else fails going to a fully custom ecommerce solution. The costs of developing, managing and scaling a custom solution is just a high barrier to entry so that is why it is the last idea to me. There are always exceptions but I have seen this recipe work well for people.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I see there's a 30 day Trial at Magento, will look around for similar and present this to the guy ... Thanks guys.

</comment><comment><USER3> Both are fine and if you're unsure, go for hosted because it will be easier</comment>


Study: Old Age Begins at 27 - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4995546/Old-age-begins-at-27-as-mental-powers-start-to-decline-scientists-find.html <comment><AUTHOR> Lately we're finding good arguments for the idea that people start declining in abilities earlier than we thought.

At the same time, there's a lot of work being done on life extension.

What happens if we extend life to, say, 150 and what we get is this long, 100-year decline into complete cognitive paralysis?

I'm 43 and I don't feel like I'm losing it. In fact, in some ways I feel more cognitively adept than I was at 27. When I was 27 I was quicker on my feet, but there wasn't a depth there. Now, at least to me, I feel that I have a lot more weight to my decisions and actions. I dunno - tough subject. It could be, like the pot discussion, that I simply _feel_ this way.

I _do_ know that if cognitive decline is going to be defined as starting in the late 20s, we're going to start seeing a lot of middle-aged people getting medicated for age-related cognitive issues in the near future.

<comment><USER2> Wisdom is what it's called. After 40 your reflexes are slower and you are less likely to have your world shattering idea. OTOH you are probably a better judge of probabilities of success/failure, people's capabilities, and allocation of resources. Lot's of people are significant contributors into their 70's.

I dont think living to 150 means being 80 for 80 years. Probably middle age get stretched forever and the decline is about as fast and as long as it is now.

<comment><USER3> _After 40 your reflexes are slower and you are less likely to have your world shattering idea._

For some people, creativity increases with age.

But still, quick thinking and high energy levels are useful. I think it's crucial that we compress schooling as much as possible so people can do something important while they still can.

<comment><USER4> I find it frustrating that most people spend a quarter of their life just going to school and you essentially can't do anything that useful until you are at least 25 or so

<comment><USER5> I find it much more frustrating that the common concept is that once you finish your formal schooling, you're done learning.

As much as listening to lectures for 20 years can be tedious, schools are a compression (time) and expansion (breadth) of the discoveries we would make on our own, and are therefore simply a way to get people up to speed with the current world. The real learning starts after school is out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> old-gregg Maybe...

Let me share my personal experience: when I was 18-21 I struggled with advanced math in college. Now, at 30, when I re-open those books just for fun, everything makes so much sense and some aspects of it are even enjoyable.

I've failed to find a plausible explanation for myself. I haven't done much math (calculus, probability, statistics) since graduation, yet the exact same books are so much easier to read now.

I experienced a similar effect much earlier in my life: I struggled with understanding recursive algorithms when I was 12, but when I came back to them at 16 I laughed at myself - it suddenly seemed so trivial.

<comment><USER6> Also anecdotal, but...

As I started getting into heavy research on recommender systems for our startup after being somewhat lax in my research reading for a few years I stumbled into some papers that were really hard for me to push through. I kept thinking, "I must be slipping, I know this stuff wasn't as hard for me in college."

Then at some point I needed to look up a couple things in some of my textbooks (I saved them all) and as soon as I picked them up I thought ... wait? That was the hard stuff? This is all so ... trivial. Since the progression from textbooks to academic papers had mostly come at some remove, I'd not noticed that I was gradually reading much harder material, to the point that the stuff that I found hard in computer science in college now seems all rather easy.

Now, I'm 28 at this point, but already I've noticed that I'm not as fast as I once was, but I've got more momentum. When I throw myself at a problem it's with the goal of crushing it rather than dancing around it. This seems to be what's awesome about smart folks that are in middle to older ages. There's like this blunt force of knowledge that can be thrown at hard problems. Great systems programmers in their 50s are awesome to work with.

Note, also, that the article also mentions that knowledge based abilities increase up until you're 60.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't buy it.

I suspect that it is more related to dull/stressful work environments than age (at 22 you're either still in college or fresh out from it).

<comment><USER8> Also, mental dexterity and knowledge are probably inversely proportional to each other because once you learn more you draw on more to make decisions. So, if we could rid our minds of our knowledge we might improve our thinking speed.

Anyways, for people who feel down about their age, remember that nothing anybody does will last forever. Our judgment of significance is significantly colored by our finite sense of time. Just think of what seemed like a long time to you at 3 vs at 30. Thus, it is ok to primarily aim at happiness in this life instead of achievement, though aiming at achievement is also good if it makes you happy.

<comment><USER9> Regardless of thinking speed, the more you know, the better you think. You are able to analyze a given situation or problem more effectively because you can draw on past experience or knowledge and make a more informed decision. I would happily take an 'experienced' brain over a young on that is faster (if thats even true, which i dont really believe...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This makes sense. Most Paleolithic members of the species Homo sapiens were dead by age forty, so there hasn't been much selection pressure to favor human beings preserving health or their faculties much past that age. I'm living on borrowed time, being almost twice as old as the headlined age. On the other hand, some people decline more or less rapidly, and from a better or worse base, so fifty-year-olds can still outsmart twenty-seven-year-olds in specific cases.

"However, the report published in the academic journal Neurobiology Of Ageing, found that abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until at the age of 60."

Live life to the fullest while you can appreciate it.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's never too late to start _anything_ \- developing yourself is a function of time and passion:

[http://www.unlikelysalsero.com/2007/08/magic-of-time-last- on...](http://www.unlikelysalsero.com/2007/08/magic-of-time-last-one- standing.html)

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

-Socrates, in Plato, Dialogues, Apology

No matter what age you are, I think this is important.

How often (daily? weekly?) do you think about your self image, attitudes, actions, beliefs, relationships, and recurring thoughts?

I didn't want to get all Mike Litman on you but..

</comment><comment><USER12> Sigh, I wasted the best years of my life in a startup that didn't get me rich. ;)

<comment><USER13> Sounds like there's a story there. Care to tell?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> In case anyone is worried about their twenty-something cognitive performance, bear in mind that the refutation of this study will probably not surface in the media; [http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get- docum...](http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get- document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124&ct=1)

-An unconcerned twenty-something ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> If the peak is at 22, we are really short changing our children by setting the age of majority at 18.

<comment><USER16> No frickin' kidding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Who cares if your clock slows down say 20% by 50? Think how easy it is to optimize any program by 20%. It's irrelevant. Much more important is what software you're running. Like other posters here, I struggled with things in my 'prime' that I now find much easier. That phenomenon doesn't seem to get talked about much. There seems to be this truism that intellectually challenging work peaks before 30. How many great novels or plays were written by anyone in their 20's? Yet important math and music is often done young. Go figure.

<comment><USER18> I dunno about novels or plays, but Orson Welles was 25 when he made Citizen Kane.

I think it all matters on how accessible the medium is to young people. Modern music is VERY accessible, because there are so few limitations that you can really do whatever you want and while it may not be good, you've got a better chance of its being so since the concepts behind music are comparatively simple.

If we were talking about the world of composition, on the other hand, things would be much different. I doubt that we'd see many young brilliant composers, unless they were Mozarts (i.e. helped along heavily by parents).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Twenty-seven has long had negative connotations, as it is the age at which > many popular musicians died, including Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian > Jones, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain.

Twenty seven is an interesting age. This much I knew for years before reaching it, and turned out to be true. I don't really know why, but it sortof makes sense. It's when you go from being a young man to a real adult. Strangely though, for me it was not filled with responsabilities, on the contrary.

<comment><USER20> I died when I was 27.

<comment><USER21> you still haven't noticed?

<comment><USER21> you guys are so sensitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Researchers have found that peoples' mental abilities peak at 22 before beginning to deteriorate just five years later."

The 5-year gap doesn't make sense. If you're at your _peak_ at age 22, wouldn't you, by definition, begin to decline immediately after? :-)

I suppose you could level off for 5 years, but then it's misleading to call 22 a "peak".

</comment><comment><USER23> Ok, so certain mental abilities deteriorate. Maybe, some other mental abilities improve.

The problem with this research is that it is trying look at brain from a certain view point, ignoring all other view points. A more holistic approach would provide a better understanding of how mental abilities change over time.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's may be a problem of training. A lot of people stop learning new things when then leave university so their brain could become less efficient.

Correlation don't imply causality. There is not enough facts to convince me.

</comment><comment><USER25> ok, my next startup will be selling suicide gears for 29+ people ...

</comment><comment><USER26> Try one of those mind training games for a couple of months and you'll see how lame this kind of study is.

<comment><USER13> You sum up most of the stupid attitudes in this thread. The scientists in this study most likely are better at this field than you. Probably The Times misinterpreted the results. Still your denial is hilarious. Just because you're smart, doesn't make you right. That goes for all of you.

<comment><USER26> I'm not a neuroscientist. But I'm an avid reader of neuroscience blogs (not the shiny ones, the ones by and for scientists) and papers. The Torygraph isn't exactly qualitity media but I doubt they misinterpreted the paper that bad.

The problem with current research is it's requiring too much previous knowledge to grasp even the abstract. And it's getting more granular and harder to sell with mainstream headlines. I actually prefer it this way.

There is a large amount of neuroscience research from the last decade that didn't make it to mainstream media. Specially things that could offend people or _cults_.

Mainstream media is obsolete because of this. A small blog post with proper explanations as popups or links to references (even Wikipedia) delivers more efficiently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I only hope that my age will not keep me from learning new things. The most important thing when learning is to keep a good attitude. I believe that the brain can be trained to get smarter at all ages.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm 23. I'm going to reference this research when we pitch our company to raise money. Fund the young guys.

<comment><USER29> That's a good idea. And if you're still pitching when you get older, you can reference this other study about the brain peaking at 39: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=345785>

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> May be Its fault of education systems and corporate jobs..I don't buy it for sure

</comment><comment><USER31> Carp, no wunder Im dum nwo

</comment><comment><USER32> If true, and I don't know enough about this area to comment, but if so, it seems for optimum gene selection, people should procreate (or at least freeze their genetic material in a lab for future use) prior to this age.

I have often thought that perhaps the rise in mental disorders in children such as autism could be related to people waiting until later in life to have children, at which point, their DNA has already begun to break down. Studies showing that the oldest child in a family tends to also have a higher IQ is consistent with this. The younger you are when you reproduce, the more fit your genes are, and therefore the smarter, healthier, etc. your children are likely to be. Economic pressures now make people wait until later to reproduce than they did a generation or two ago, but this could be counteracted by saving genetic material in a lab when one is young, then later, when one is economically ready to reproduce, one can make use of the stored material to do so. It is unlikely in the near future that people will all of a sudden want to go back to having kids right out of high school, so, for optimum gene selection, they should at least save off their genetic material (sperm, eggs) for future use. Otherwise, going forward, the average intelligence of the populace is likely to decline.

<comment><USER2> I think that, from the kid's point of view, it's better to be born to parents in their 30's. The genetic risk is small, but more than offset by the maturity and improved economic circumstances of the parents. It's not until the late 30's or 40's that genetic decline starts to be a serious risk.

<comment><USER32> The fact remains if IQ is tapering off in the late 20's, the a child born to the parents in their 30's may not have as high an IQ as the parents. Personally my parents were in their mid-20's when I crawled out of the evolutionary slime, and in a sense I agree with you on the maturity and economic front - both factors were issues - and I think there has been growth there since, and my younger siblings had it better as far as maturity went, but honestly I wouldn't have it any other way, at least I know I got the best evolutionary shot I could get, lol! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I refuse to believe this.

</comment><comment><USER34> Damn, I only have 4 years left.

</comment><comment><USER35> So true, It is a known fact among the chess players that the ability to calculate ahead peaks at the age of 27.

<comment><USER36> No it isn't. Everything I've heard suggests that chess players tend to peak around their mid-30s, and then you have Viktor Korchnoi, who won the Soviet junior championship at 16, was playing for the world championship at 50, and was rated 85th in the world at 75. His 78th birthday is coming up next week.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to look for torrents? - <AUTHOR> Hi, Time goes by and it seems more and more difficult to find torrents. What's your trick?<p>Currently limited to TPB... <comment><USER2> You'll probably get more mileage out of asking this at torrents.reddit.com or trackers.reddit.com or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER3> Private trackers.</comment>


Redmine tips e-book launched - <AUTHOR> http://theadmin.org/articles/redmine-tips-launched

<comment><USER2> I suggest adding a sample download, preferably in all three formats (PDF, ePub, mobi).</comment>


Ask HN: Would it be feasible to build an open source mobile OS based on XNU? - <AUTHOR> Isn't most of the goodness of iOS (like sandboxing) included within XNU/Darwin?<p>As far as I can gather, the "iOS" portion is just a collection of drivers and UI frameworks that could be re-implemented in open source. <comment><USER2> Building a mobile OS with sandboxing is not hard. Building an app ecosystem that has the apps people expect to be able to use your mobile OS is extremely hard.

</comment><comment><USER3> This would not be realistic. XNU is a tiny fraction of iOS. Also, Apple does not publish the version of XNU that makes up iOS.</comment>


Sleep hacks - <AUTHOR> http://download.cnet.com/40-Sleep-Hacks-Geek-s-Guide-to-Optimizing-Sleep/3000-2129_4-10864038.html <comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to a PDF:

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The- Ge...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Geeks-Guide- to-Optimizing-Sleep.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> I see the title has now been re-written. It used to be more descriptive, and point out that this was a non-scribd link. Now it's been trimmed simply to say it's about sleep hack, and not mentioning the non-scribd aspect.

I find that leaves a slightly bad taste in my mouth. I wish it hadn't been done, but I guess I can understand why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Hurrah! Thank you fellow scribd-loather. I flagged the other article out of disgust but was annoyed as the topic interests me.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't mind just going to the Scribd page and clicking the green 'download' button if they would just let me have the file without extracting my personal details (facebook connect).

<comment><USER4> That's why I use Bugmenot: <http://www.bugmenot.com/view/scribd.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This submission - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953615> \- is of a document about getting better sleep, and taking control of your sleeping patterns. It's also hosted by scribd.

In the discussion a link was provided to a non-scribd version, so here it is. It's a 1.8MB ZIP of a PDF.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not trying to give a personal plug (well, maybe a little bit), but I wrote a bed time calculator that might count as a pretty cool 'sleep hack'.

The idea is that it counts backwards in sleep cycles from the time your alarm has to go off so that you wake up during a light phase of sleep. Waking up in light sleep (vs deep sleep) will let you wake up feeling more awake, alert and refreshed.

If you're interested, the URL is <http://sleepyti.me>

I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions about the page, so if you have any feel free to let me know!

<comment><USER6> The flaw there is that it's often hard to control when you fall asleep.

There's a watch on the market that monitors your movements in order to spot when you're lightly sleeping. You can set an alarm, and a window of time before that alarm. If, during that window of time, the watch detects you moving, it'll go off then. Otherwise, it'll go off at the specified time even if you're deep asleep.

<comment><USER5> I believe that there's also an iPhone application that will use the accelerometer to figure out when you're moving the most during the time frame in which you're supposed to wake up. The increased movement implies lighter sleep, and that will trigger the alarm to wake up.

The idea with <http://sleepyti.me> is basically to emulate this without the need for external hardware. I'm in the same boat as you--that is, I have trouble actually falling asleep sometimes.

I originally had 'time to fall asleep' option that would allow the user to specify how long it usually took to fall asleep. Unfortunately, no one really ever used it. It's a lot easier to say "the average human takes fourteen minutes to fall asleep," than to try to calculate that in beforehand.

My advice is to give yourself a half hour or so to fall asleep. If it's been longer than that and you're still awake, get up, walk around, go back to bed in 15 minutes (and recalculate from sleepyti.me!). Research says that laying in bed longer than a half hour while awake will actually make insomnia worse. If you're sitting in bed for over a half an hour every night, you might consider talking to a doctor about sleep aids. It helps me sleep better just _to know_ that I could take an Ambien if I need to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Surely I'm not the only person who thinks a PDF inside a ZIP is _worse_ than Scribd.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry, clearly I should've done even more work for you so you wouldn't have to do anything. Now I have, or at least, I spent two minutes looking thorugh the existing thread to find the link already there. So here, just for you, a direct link to a PDF that you can view online and without any extra work:

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The- Ge...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Geeks-Guide- to-Optimizing-Sleep.pdf)

<comment><USER8> I have to ask though... why submit this again to HN when all of these other download methods were linked on the other thread already?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953637>

These two threads basically show what I have always said... PDFs are wrong for the web (and any 'tool' that displays them).

<comment><AUTHOR> In short, because the other submission has a link to the scribd site, and the direct links were buried. But submitting this separately I gave people a chance to decide whether they want to access the direct version(s), or the scribd one.

Ideally a site that eventually replaces HN, or an update to HN, will have a single location where similar submissions can congregate, and then we get a single discussion thread. In this case we could then have put the direct links as alternative sources, and retained a single discussion location.

But we don't have that, so I provided an alternative source that was close to the surface, instead of buried in a thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel sorry for <http://www.sleepwarrior.com/> that their site is in "maintenance mode".

</comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only one who thinks you shouldn't "hack" your sleep. The human body isn't a computer or a program and shouldn't be treated as such.

<comment><USER11> I disagree - the more we understand the underlying mechanisms of our body, the better we can get it to perform. It's a bit like saying changing your diet because you know what's bad for you is messing with nature.

<comment><USER10> That's why I'll be taking advice from my doctor and not an ebook.

<comment><USER12> Suppose the author aggregated information from many doctors and wrote it down an ebook?

And what makes your doctor the authority on sleep? They inevitably get their information from scientific studies not conducted by themselves, and the author of an ebook can do the exact same thing.

There's no reason to disparage the ebook just because it doesn't look like the conventional form of authority.

<comment><USER10> >Suppose the author aggregated information from many doctors and wrote it down an ebook?

Then it should cite the sources.

<comment><USER13> It does, actually. Most - not all - of the "hacks" are cited and linked to doctors, studies, the American Nutritional Association, etc.

A few don't lead anywhere, guess that's a symptom of linking out of a two year old ebook?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thank you. I have a feeling that my brain works best during nights, but I have to start tuning to overcome that feeling.

<comment><USER15> It's worth noting that some humans are shifted into the evening. Morning- persons and night-owls seem to have held different advantages to our species once we domesticated dogs. Morning folks catch the first rays of light for the day's labor, night folks tend the watch fires and keep intruders away while the bulk of the humans sleep.

<comment><USER16> That's an interesting idea. Is there any additional reading related to this?

<comment><USER15> Of course. The following Wikipedia article has several references: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype> It is also worthwhile to do a Google Scholar search with the query "evolution eveningness".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thank you :)

</comment><comment><USER18> modafinil = sleep hax.</comment>


Taming Undefined Behavior in LLVM - <AUTHOR> https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1496 <comment><USER2> The post mentions:

> Finally, we noticed that there has been an interesting bit of convergent > evolution in compiler IRs: basically all heavily optimizing AOT compilers > (including GCC, MSVC, and Intel CC) have their own versions of deferred UB.

Does anyone know how GCC's deferred UB solution works and whether it suffers from the same problems as LLVM's?

<comment><USER2> Answering my own question, the paper [1] referenced by the post goes into some detail on this in section 9.

[1] [http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/papers/undef- pldi17.pdf](http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/papers/undef-pldi17.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The thing that trips me out is I kept seeing opposite claims in R&D: undefined behavior can improve performance a lot; using type-directed compilation can improve performance a lot. Most compilers rely on undefined behavior for aggressive optimizations. I wonder what the cutting-edge is on opposite end for type-safe languages and type-directed optimizations. FLINT for SML is the first one I saw like that:

[http://flint.cs.yale.edu/flint/publications/tcps.html](http://flint.cs.yale.edu/flint/publications/tcps.html)

<comment><USER4> To me, undefined behaviour analysis and typing analysis seem very similar: Both allow a compiler to infer things that can help improve performance … So why do you see the claims that both can help performance as "opposite"?

<comment><USER5> The type system proves things about my program that must be true and disallows invalid programs. The undefined behavior system decides things about my program that may or may not be true and just breaks my program when one of us is wrong (and I don't even care who: whether it is the compiler that came up with something insane or me trying to do the impossible <\- I honestly don't care).

<comment><USER4> I think when undefined behaviour is used for optimizations the programmer does not want it is more of a misunderstanding than one party (programmer or compiler) necessarily being "wrong", as a compiler assumes that a program should make sense (i.e. is not undefined) and infers things from that. To clarify, would you say that assumption is problematic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know of any other good blogs about LLVM and compilers?

<comment><USER7> [http://blog.llvm.org/](http://blog.llvm.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm still waiting on an A:B test that shows that UB in the compiler makes my computer run faster.

<comment><USER9> What?

<comment><USER10> I think what pizlonator meant is that some languages like C have pervasive undefined behavior. (For instance, INT_MAX + 1 is allowed to erase your hard drive.) The claim is that this allows compiler optimizations that would otherwise not be possible. The question is: how bad would that be? Let's turn off all these optimizations and see how much the benchmark scores drop. If everything is twice as slow, then maybe this undefined stuff is worth it. If everything is one percent slower, then maybe it's not.

<comment><USER11> I think the performance implications of bounds checking are fairly well studied.

<comment><USER3> That part of the field is still in exploration phase. The reason is that you can mix run-time checks with no checks for performance enhancement. Static analysis and other schemes are used to prove specific code doesn't need checks. The rest get checks automatically. Performance varies per scheme applied with overhead going down significantly over past decade. We don't yet know the answer on just how much spatial or temporal safety we can get at what cost.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Expensive Wine Just Tastes Better - <AUTHOR> http://brainblogger.com/2008/02/04/expensive-wine-just-tastes-better/

<comment><USER2> see "all marketers are liars" by seth godin for a pretty thorough treatment of this -- our satisfaction is heavily influenced by the stories we tell ourselves, e.g. that expensive wine tastes better. even just drinking out of an expensive glass causes people to perceive the wine as tasting better.</comment>


The Media Industry and the "Make-Google-Pay" Fantasy - <AUTHOR> https://mondaynote.com/the-media-industry-and-the-make-google-pay-fantasy-1b4de36e3b04 <comment><USER2> I'm a lot less worried about the "link tax" clauses than the copyright liability clause. Not because the link tax is a good idea but because it's a spectacular own goal that is mainly going to hurt the idiots who lobbied for it.

Giving companies direct liability for policing copyright in user-uploaded content is a much bigger disaster, on two separate fronts, both highly damaging:

1) Implementing youtube-style content id will be a huge burden for small companies. Youtube reportedly spent tens of millions on it over several years. This tilts the field in favor of large incumbents even more than it already is by nature. While the amount of content to screen is really small, human-driven filtering is a possibility, but as soon as you need to scale up you're screwed. Any startup in Europe that needs to do this is a no-go from now on, IMO.

2) Back to that multi-milion content ID system: it sucks. It sucks really badly. It over-reports infringement left right and center. Now imagine what it will be like when youtube is liable _a priori_ for every false negative; any sane legal department is going to demand a minimal number of false negatives at any cost. Now imagine what that will do to the false positive rate. Now imagine what the false positive rate will be when every site has to bodge together a similar system, with neither google's money nor google's technical expertise.

The second point has been missed by most criticism of the Copyright Directive, and to me it's the biggest problem of all. I fear the wasteland that will result. Are we going back to the point where only a handful of content producers exist and everybody else should be content just consuming it? Welcome to the 20th century, Europe.

<comment><USER3> I'd hope (?) that one outcome is 3rd party sass companies which are willing to do this screening (ala Sift Science) and potentially even insure to handle the risk (ala Climate Corp, which offers farmers insurance based on the outcomes of its models). If the EU has these laws, this could be a solid business model.

<comment><USER4> Yes, this can make jobs, and also some individuals very wealthy, but this is a net loss for the users of the internet: just another channel controlled by profit-seeking corporate motives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The very idea that the aggregator (Google) should pay the advertisers (news sites) for directing traffic _to_ them is just patently absurd. By common sense, it should be the other way around. Sadly, the traditional media has a massive conflict of interest here, so the issue passed at least in my part of EU with little to no ado.

But once the member states start enacting the directive to legislation, the manure will surely meet the propeller. No amount of regulation can change fundamental economic facts. Once Google News starts going black around EU, and the search engine traffic & revenue disappearing from the publishers, I am sure they will be soon very eager to license their content at zero cost, or less.

<comment><USER6> Is Google News really that big a deal for publishers?

Considering all the places where they voluntarily put their content (Facebook, Twitter, Apple News, etc...), is the loss of Google News really a problem?

I don't see anything magic about Google News that isn't done better (Apple News), or more thoroughly (Twitter) elsewhere.

<comment><USER7> They are referring to news snippets that show up in Google Search (not the Google News app on your phone). Those are one of the most significant sources of traffic for publishers.

<comment><USER8> Even for a web search, Google News doesn't show snippets at all anymore, just headlines and thumbnails. (This is in the "Top Stories" widget and on the "News" tab.)

It looks like the snippet is still there for generic web results, but that's further down the page for a news search and probably not a big driver of traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Local and major news sites alike, are cesspoools of intrusive advertising and tracking. They're so poorly built, with so much advertising, that they hardly even function any longer. Even if Google links to a news site, I won't click. It's probably 30 secs for my new iPhone to partially fail loading, abruptly reload, and then auto play video I didn't ask for... while covering the article with more ads that I have to click to dismiss.

Reading about the latest headlines is like sitting in a timeshare presentation, only it drains my phone battery and crashes my browser.

It's a shame that the media is so bad at producing media. The quality is down, the delivery is terrible, and they want more money.

<comment><USER10> > Local and major news sites alike, are cesspoools of intrusive advertising > and tracking. They're so poorly built, with so much advertising, that they > hardly even function any longer.

But that's an _effect_ , though maybe one that will create a vicious cycle. It's not the cause. The revenue rug was pulled out from under local news websites, and they're struggling to keep the lights on. Advertising and tracking are how everyone says you need to make money on the internet nowadays, and they're just following the example set by Google, Facebook, et al.

Focusing too much local news site's advertising and tracking practices is missing the elephant in the room.

If local news is left to die, there will be little to no media oversight or local government. _What happens in state legislatures is important, etc._ If you require all these small organizations to have _two_ competencies, you're going to get a lot more government corruption.

<comment><USER11> Local news organizations have _always_ been required to maintain two competencies - advertising and journalism. This predates Google News, Google, and indeed the internet.

You're completely right about the _absolutely critical_ importance of a free, open, and brave press. Yet it's possible that this particular business problem, the one you have so wisely and correctly pointed to, is not novel. Newspapers historically have found a variety of ways to fund their operations. I hope they can continue to exhibit the entrepreneurial spirit that helps keep a vibrant press free!

<comment><USER12> > Local news organizations have always been required to maintain two > competencies - advertising and journalism. This predates Google News, > Google, and indeed the internet.

3\. Distribution.

News organisations like the music industry before them need to realize that a huge part of what people used to pay them for was the reliable distribution of their product. This and the markup on it was where they made their profits and now its gone.

<comment><USER10> > News organisations like the music industry before them need to realize that > a huge part of what people used to pay them for was the reliable > distribution of their product. This and the markup on it was where they made > their profits and now its gone.

A viable, independent media is vital to a well-functioning democracy. I just realized that the implication decision behind of all this talk (about how the new media need to find a viable business model) is that our system of government shouldn't stand unless some of its vital organs are profitable in a dog-eat-dog capitalist system. Capitalism is given a higher priority than democracy.

<comment><USER12> > our system of government shouldn't stand unless some of its vital organs are > profitable in a dog-eat-dog capitalist system

Plenty of countries get around this with independent but government funded media, the BBC in the UK, ABC in Australia, etc. I guess NPR is probably the closest thing in the US. They do a better job at reporting the news than most commercial providers and their sites are a lot less crapware infested (but getting worse), compare this ([https://www.abc.net.au/news/](https://www.abc.net.au/news/)) to just about any commercial news organisation.

The only problem I've ever had with the ABC is that it's crap at local news.

<comment><USER10> > Plenty of countries get around this with independent but government funded > media

Yeah, that's kinda what I was getting at. I don't recall the conversation advancing in that direction very often.

> The only problem I've ever had with the ABC is that it's crap at local news.

I honestly think local news is the main problem. I'm not super pessimistic about the NYT, the WSJ, or the Washington Post. They have the prestige and the reach to attract lots of subscribers and/or patrons, and they're big enough to invest heavily in technology. It's the small local and regional papers that worry me. The staff per eyeball to cover all their beats is probably a lot less favorable, and they don't have much prestige to draw on to attract other support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the author has a good grasp of the situation that is more important than the average person understands. Murdoch knows his empire is waning and is attempting to ingratiate himself to government officials by becoming an unofficial mouthpiece of several conservative governments. His coup d'etat would be if he is able to turn that relationship official in some regions, pass laws to make his content mandatory to publish, them extract a link tax from the distributors. An irony of ironies considering he will build that on the back of ideogolgy that fundamentally criticizes this strategy.

Note: An exceptionally well written analysis that shows the author has a good understanding of both product and business motivations. It is so rare to see writing like this in the era of outrage journalism.

<comment><USER14> > _His coup d 'etat would be if he is able to turn that relationship official > in some regions_

"In Germany, a comparable anti-snippet law was rendered powerless by a group of publishers who did the math and offered their content for free in exchange for the usual stream of clicks sent back to them" [1]. In summary, this law has made having access to Google more valuable.

[1] [https://mondaynote.com/the-media-industry-and-the-make- googl...](https://mondaynote.com/the-media-industry-and-the-make-google-pay- fantasy-1b4de36e3b04)

<comment><USER13> I don't think you understand. He would make it mandatory to list his content and to pay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think if pressure from "traditional" publishers keeps going, google is going to put plan B in action and go on to actually own the news as well. It's not hard for them to build an "uber for news" for journalists, editors and the common man, as in fact they have been subsidizing the open web with adsense for decades anyway. Maybe the next google reader will be about google's own news.

<comment><USER16> The problem with that plan is that if Google were to release such a service in the EU, the EU would then fine Google for using their search monopoly to prop up a service in another industry (News). The EU did something similar when Google used their search monopoly to promote Google Shopping.

EU is gonna EU.

<comment><USER15> Sure, but if google decides to pull out of european news, someone else might find it an attractive idea. And , considering that (if this passes) EU will have made it impossible for a european company to do that, it will be somewhere outside the EU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's stopping Google from refusing to pay the news sites, thus de-indexing them from Google entirely? If the relationship is "pay me for my content", then refusing to serve links to their media is absolutely within their rights.

Only the publishers have something to lose here.

<comment><USER18> The next step is probably a version of "must carry" for the Internet where Google is required by law to index news and required by law to pay for it.

<comment><USER19> The analogy is quite difficult. A television station is a well defined legal and technical object with a licensing regime, a standardized image format etc. A cable network is, by definition a transmission infrastructure designed to carry a number of such signals.

A "news website" and "news agregator" are... what exactly? Since search traffic is so valuable, publishers would modify their sites readily to fall just under the legal threshold for news sites in order to get picked up by Google's non-aggregator of non-news sites. It's virtually impossible to craft definitions that are simultaneously not trivial to circumvent by Google and also have no impact on established, unrelated internet content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As usual with upcoming legislation, FUD predominates in the conversation. A reasonable person may be used to parties with vested interests to exaggerate or misrepresent facts, but it's unfortunate when parties from whom you may not expect a clear bias continue to perpetuate uncertainty and doubt.

Article 13 states that the measures to seek rightholder approval for user- submitted content "shall be effective and proportionate, taking into account, among other factors" the nature and size of services, whether they're a small and medium business, the sheer volume of material uploaded, and the cost burden of such an effort.

Furthermore, it refers to a precise definition of the sort of enterprise that is to be impacted by this regime -- those that provide "public access to a large amount of works or other subject-matter uploaded by its users which it organises and promotes for profit-making purposes", exempting a variety of others. This leaves ample leeway to require a more rigorous scheme from hosts as big as YouTube while being more lenient with a hobbyist forum.

Article 11 states that the copyright protection of journalistic articles from aggregators will expire at the end of the following year from the article's publication. It reaffirms the right of publishers to decide how they wish to profit from their work -- if they choose to make it available for the aggregator at no cost, that is their right as well.

<comment><USER21> OK could you point to anything that outlines actual criteria for classification because the language you included from Article 13 in your comment is not restrictive in any manner.

<comment><USER20> Original text [1], changed by amendments [2]. Relevant definition:

Amendment 150, Proposal for a directive, Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 4b (new):

> _' online content sharing service provider' means a provider of an > information society service one of the main purposes of which is to store > and give access to the public to a significant amount of copyright protected > works or other protected subject-matter uploaded by its users, which the > service optimises and promotes for profit making purposes. Microenterprises > and small-sized enterprises within the meaning of Title I of the Annex to > Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC and services acting in a non- > commercial purpose capacity such as online encyclopaedia, and providers of > online services where the content is uploaded with the authorisation of all > right holders concerned, such as educational or scientific repositories, > shall not be considered online content sharing service providers within the > meaning of this Directive. Providers of cloud services for individual use > which do not provide direct access to the public, open source software > developing platforms, and online market places whose main activity is online > retail of physical goods, should not be considered online content sharing > service providers within the meaning of this Directive;_

[1] [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52016PC0593) [2] [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&langua...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P8-TA-2018-0337)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Youtube will arbitrarily deprioritize, demonetize, or remove content from its platform, and as with all of Google, the appeals process is slow and questionable. Since it exercises so much curation power over the content on its platform, it should likewise be liable for said content. Protection from liability for content on your platform should only be extended to platforms that actually act as common carriers.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Traffic of news sites depends heavily on Google."

It seems counterintuitive to me, at least for my use case.

I rarely search for "news", I have a handful of websites to which I usually go to for them.

I might search the name in Google if for whatever reason it doesn't show on the top results when I start typing the name on the search bar, because I'm too lazy to use bookmarks.

Do most other people use aggregators or "search" for news?

<comment><USER24> Yes, I use aggregators so I don't fall victim (as easily) to echochambers of my own design. All sources are biased, but at least you can hopefully get some idea of the truth by reading differently biased sources.

<comment><USER10> > Yes, I use aggregators so I don't fall victim (as easily) to echochambers of > my own design. All sources are biased, but at least you can hopefully get > some idea of the truth by reading differently biased sources.

I'm not sure if that makes sense as a strategy. By relying on aggregators (that aren't human curated like Apple News), you're just getting the sources that do the best SEO. If your aggregator does algorithmic curation, they'll build an echo chamber for you.

I think if you want to avoid falling into an echo chamber, it's best to identify a couple of high-quality news sources with different perspectives, and read them unselectively. Say two national newspapers with different political orientations, an international newspaper, and a local newspaper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most news sites have comment sections. I am wondering if someone could post copyrighted material on purpose in the comment section and use the new EU law to sue publishers.

<comment><USER25> IIRC, according to the new regulations, anything that a user uploads must be pre-screened for copyright violations _before_ being made public.

<comment><USER26> This makes complete sense to me. There is no reason that posting content to a platform that millions of people could see should be free or instant. Other publishing platforms take responsibility for their content, and it costs them money that Google isn't spending, because it would rather spend it on legal on the back end.

I wonder if any platform has ever created a moderation system that can acheive this scale. I imagine it would require captcha like screening process with multiple tiers of moderator specialization and appeals.

<comment><USER27> > There is no reason that posting content to a platform that millions of > people could see should be free or instant.

So if someone is on a particular platform, such as the one we're currently using, and they post a base64 encoded image, or article, or whatever...

...you really want every possible comment screened, paid for, or be delayed in some manner so someone or something can check that the data is legit?

That can't work; sure you could probably figure a way to work around the base64 encoding and automate things, but what happens if people start using other more difficult encoding systems to publish such content in text-only forums?

Yes, this is reducto-ad-absurdum territory - but these kinds of directives would have to apply to every kind of user-generated and posted content system, including mostly or wholly text-only boards like this one.

<comment><USER26> I am not talking about automating things, but rather setting up a system of self-governance. What if posting a video required you to review other peoples' videos to earn the right to post? And if you deviate from the majority opinion you get penalized? Like captcha, this would solve a problem by aligning incentives and solving a massive problem with a massively distributed workforce of real people doing small tasks.

<comment><USER28> There is no conceivable way random consumers can identify whether a random video violates someone else's copyright. Every consumer would somehow have to be familiar with every video in existence, and who owns it, who they've licensed it to, and all those people's identities on every platform.

Imagine if making your comment here required you to investigate the originality of several other comments and whether the posters may have posted similar things elsewhere under other names, or licensed someone else's content, or violated someone else's copyright. Would you still bother posting?

<comment><USER26> If you can't trust a user to identify copyright violations in someone else's work then you probably should blindly host content created by that user either. I think people would learn how copyright works so that they can prove it and earn the right to post on a platform with massive distribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> And article 13 is not only for Google... Copyright scanning is hard and there government requires 100% recall, which can only be achieved by shutting down the site.

IMO the government receives the criticism and just redirects the fire towards big ones.

</comment><comment><USER30> After numerous sites will have to block access to them for users coming from Europe, even if it is for a short while to implement tools to comply with these regulations, people will not start to hate them, they won't start hating Google, Youtube or whatever site they are barred from accessing, they will start to hate the EU. Anti-EU sentiment will get a big boost and they can't blame anyone else than themselves, good job and good luck bureaucrats.

</comment><comment><USER31> This article is a one sided look at how publishers benefit from Google without considering the other side, at all. This is not helpful for informed discussion.

If Google is 'helping' these publishers then the counterpoint is these publishers are also 'helping' Google by making the content at their cost in the first place. Without their content what will Google search? Wikipedia, blogs?

Without news content google search users will not get news context about their search queries so the search engine will lack a critical perspective and become lower quality, which will take billions of dollars of value off Google, lower its value to users and make room for other options.

Let's not pretend Google is not benefiting from news content. And since people clearly value news content producers can generate value outside of Google, and Google will need to pay to make money from that content or do without. Targeting a predatory model will make space for better models and ideas to emerge.

<comment><USER11> > If Google is 'helping' these publishers then the counterpoint is these > publishers are also 'helping' Google by making the content at their cost in > the first place. Without their content what will Google search? Wikipedia, > one person blogs?

The whole rest of the internet, which among other things contains a sizable number of media outlets that are not subject to these protections?

Frankly, Google is better-equipped to walk away from news providers than the news providers are to walk away from google. Google has done this before, even.

You are, of course, _absolutely right_ that there is room for another business model here. In fact, one might posit that there has been room for decades! Surely it's possible that there could be a business model whereby consumers get access to the news they value for a reasonable price, producers of news get paid fairly, and profit-extracting aggregators are kept to the slimmest of financial margins. Surely it would be better for consumers (who doesn't like supporting journalism, so critical to a free society?) and journalistic outlets (who obviously would love to be free of Google's iron yoke)!

It's curious that no good replacement has arisen when the opportunity and incentives are so clear! Perhaps in Spain, where Google News does not operate on domestic newspapers and has not for years? But I'm sure that's merely my failure to understand how Google sucked all the oxygen out of the room and prevented those incentivized to do so from creating something better. Can you help me understand what I've missed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Seems it's much easier to get some legislation passed than actually fix your business model. Everytime I come across an interesting news article and want to make a 10c donation, there's never an easy micropayment way to do it. Furthermore places like the wall street journal block their content and ask you to pay hundreds of dollars. I'm not going to pay hundreds of dollars just so I can speed-read a single article for 60 seconds.

Come on, media industry, get with the times and understand your target customer.

<comment><USER33> The WSJ has gotten with the times. They're doing well with their approach. It's what their customer wants. I like their model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > By pushing to the "link tax", publishers are shooting themselves in the foot > three times over.

I don't think that's true at all. Beyond some short term traffic loss there are no negative consequences for the media industry if Google leaves this space. I suspect that's what big publishers actually aim for, they understand Google is not likely to pay and want to control how users discover news themselves.

<comment><USER35> The challenge publishers are fighting is effectively scabs in a union strike. If news publishers block Google, the one (or few) publisher who chooses not to gets all the traffic. And the problem with news is it's easily copied and redistributed. So the real reporters and journalists could all block Google and Google may try to sustain itself on pushing blogspam instead.

It's very possible that only government regulation which forces participation (such as the link tax) can actually work.

<comment><USER24> > It's very possible that only government regulation which forces > participation (such as the link tax) can actually work.

Why don't we just make Google give every news org a few million a year then? Why pretend it's anything else but Google directly paying for the news?

Side point, if news subscriptions were reasonably priced (upfront pricing, and billed monthly instead of this odd weekly nonsense), they would probably not care at all about Google.

<comment><USER36> > Why don't we just make Google give every news org a few million a year then?

That sounds sensible enough to me. As an example, Canada taxed blank CDs and CDR drives and distributed the revenue to their music industry.

<comment><USER37> Interesting, I hadn't heard of that. They assume people only store audio on cds? So individuals/companies that were storing data on cd's were supporting the music industry?

<comment><USER36> [https://torrentfreak.com/canada-increases-music-industry- sub...](https://torrentfreak.com/canada-increases-music-industry-subsidy-on- blank-cds-081213/)

I'm not Canadian so I don't know the details, but it doesn't seem like a terrible model to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What are these "future tools" that Google is investing millions in for the industry? I am not sure what they could do to help? Putting back the search term in each click through?

</comment><comment><USER39> On the copyright front, arguably Google should be liable if they "monetize" pirated content with ads.

</comment><comment><USER36> If I were a policymaker and I had to choose between saving a free and independent press and saving a big advertising company, I know which side I'd be on.

<comment><USER40> Google provides a lot of traffic to the websites operated by the free and independent press. If they don't manage to monetize that traffic sufficiently then that's their problem. Google obeys robots.txt, if they don't want to be indexed it's easy to achieve this.

I really don't understand why Google should pay for what they do.

<comment><USER41> It is a permission culture mentality. It doesn't matter that you are making them money by say buying their hardware and painting it neon green to resell - you made more money from their work so they feel entitled to another cut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How does this conversation go? I mean, seriously, were people sitting in a room thinking, ok, so Google gives us free advertisement, but what if we were to get them to _pay_ us to advertise for us? And everyone just nods and agrees? What the heck?

Greed. Everywhere. You just can't escape it. I'm so disappointed in people these days.</comment>


Bit9 and Our Customers' Security  - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bit9.com/2013/02/08/bit9-and-our-customers-security/ <comment><USER2> sounds like some bullshit to me... "we got hacked because we don't use our own shitty software." Security is a tough business. Just look @ hbgary.</comment>


Ask HN: Fingerless glove recommendations - awinter-py My office is (a) cold and (b) windy. I sit under a huge industrial vent and I love the sound masking but after an hour I can't feel my fingers.<p>Can someone recommend good fingerless gloves for typing in extreme conditions? <comment><AUTHOR> DeWalt Technicians' fingerless gloves are fairly good. They're not insulated _per se_ but are reasonably thick work gloves that happen to be fingerless. I've used them at work in offices that were cold and typing with them is fine.

[https://www.amazon.com/DPG230L-Technicians-Fingerless- Synthe...](https://www.amazon.com/DPG230L-Technicians-Fingerless-Synthetic- Leather/dp/B002FYB01W)

</comment><comment><USER2> I found some cheap ones on Amazon for £1.10. They've been great for a couple of months, so really anything would do.</comment>